A former British special forces commander has been appointed to mastermind a programme of reconciliation with members of the Taleban, General David Petraeus, the US military chief, said yesterday.

Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb, who retired recently from the British Army, was personally requested by General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, to take on the role, which is considered crucial to reduce the impact of the insurgency.

General Lamb would work at “local level reconciliation and reintegration”, General Petraeus said at a briefing at the US Embassy in London.

General Petraeus, the commander of US Central Command, which embraces Iraq and Afghanistan, was full of praise for General Lamb, a former Director Special Forces, when he worked with him in Baghdad. He played a similar role there, persuading Sunni insurgent leaders to give up fighting.

General Petraeus said that the Nato forces faced a tough time before the election yesterday, especially in Helmand, where British troops had lost many soldiers in the last two months. “Our soldiers have shed blood side by side,” he said.

He would not predict how long he expected British and other Nato troops to be engaged in fighting the Taleban, but said that the alliance needed to maintain a “sustained and substantial commitment”.

“I wouldn’t hazard the number of years this will take. But the coalition was facing an industrial-strength insurgency.

“We can pursue local reconciliation, this has already been done, but we have to kill, capture or run off the irreconcilables [the top tier of Taleban leaders],” General Petraeus said.

“Let us not forget why we are in Afghanistan. It’s because we want to ensure that this country cannot become once again a sanctuary for al-Qaeda and the other transnational extremists to carry out more attacks in the US and Britain and elsewhere.”

He described the main threat as a “syndicate of extremist insurgent elements in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which had a loose affiliation with al-Qaeda headquarters in FATA [the Federally Administered Tribal Area in Pakistan]”.

There are about 62,000 US troops in Afghanistan, with another 6,000 to be deployed by the autumn. General Petraeus admitted that the size of the Afghan national security forces was too low and he expected General McChrystal, in his review of future strategy, to call for a substantial increase in Afghan troops and police.

Times Recommends

• Times Charity Appeal: SolarAid
• Is it Black Monday all over again for Dubai?
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal